


interlude

by argle_fraster



Series: wax and wane [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Lydia is awesome, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 19:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief interlude with Peter and Allison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	interlude

Deaton shows her how to sprinkle mountain ash on her windowsill to keep werewolves out; Stiles gives her a bat and tells her to soak it in wolfsbane and hit anything coming in through the glass over the head with it.

The bat sits in the closet, and the vial of ash on the dresser. She can't bring herself to use either of them.

Under the veil of the moon, she stands by the window one night and looks out over the expanse of her parents' property. Peter Hale is there, standing below the porch; he stays still, rigid, shoulders squared and unyielding, and it takes a long time before they break the gaze between them. He doesn't try to come in again, and Lydia doesn't bother to lock the window.

It's a strange game of cat and mouse that they are playing, and she isn't sure which role is hers.

\--

She spends time with Allison, because Allison isn't a werewolf and Allison is grieving. Lydia hates the girl for not being there when _she_ needed someone, and hates herself for not being there when Allison needed _her_ , and at least focusing the loathing inward helps to distract her from projecting it on the people it should lay at the feet of. The jumbled anger gives her something tangible to hold onto that isn't college-level physics homework.

(Lydia is a bit tired of learning about forces of attraction. She _knows_ how the equation works, right down to her bones, because the angles are all wrong and the constants are fluctuating; in her world, gravity is reversed and she isn't sure she wants to fix the faulty axis she's revolving on. At night, when she's working on the assignments, it's all she can do not to push the notebook away and tear through the pages with a red pen, because it doesn't _matter_ , not anymore, and the loss cuts deeper than any razor ever has.)

Allison is subdued. It's strange to see her that way.

"I just miss him, you know?" the other girl says, and Lydia doesn't want to spend the shopping trip talking about men who could be boys and boys who should be men. Apparently it's easier to talk about Scott than Allison's mother. "Nothing feels right."

"That's just because you're hurting," Lydia tells her.

The lines in Allison's face wrinkle further, and then smooth a bit. "But I feel like I can't breathe without him."

"Then stop breathing," Lydia suggests.

They go to the Juniors section of Macy's, looking at clothes they have no reason to wear. Once upon a time, Lydia used to love this, but now the colors run together like a bleeding canvas - she doesn't like red, not even smeared across her lips, and she doesn't want to wear the violet-blue she's grown so sick of seeing around her room.

Lydia pulls out something black and slinky and terribly not her style. "What about this one?" she asks.

"Can you do that?" Allison doesn't answer; it's a throw-back, to earlier, as she absent-mindedly picks through the sale rack like Lydia doesn't have her father's platinum card in her wallet. "Just stop breathing? Can you just stop feeling things so the pain doesn't eat you up inside?"

"You can carve out anything you want to," Lydia says.

Allison eyes her warily, and Lydia puts the dress back. She's not in the mood. "I don't think that's healthy," Allison says, slowly.

"I think healthy disappeared at the end of freshman year," Lydia replies.

\--

She keeps her curtains open at night. Sometimes the moon streams through the glass and the stark, straight lines of the window frame stretch and pull over her carpet. She pads across them with nimble steps, avoiding the shadows as if walking in the refracted moonlight is the only way to feel anything anymore. She opens the blinds wide and doesn't even have to look to know that Peter is out there, standing on her grass.

He's just lucky her parents are rarely home.

Lydia stands in front of the window with her back to the glass, knowing that the moon's glow is illuminating the curves of her back and putting her spine into sharp relief; her appetite has been missing so much that she can trail her fingers lightly over the protruding arc of her shoulder blade and knows it's sharper than usual. She curls her fingers around the hem of her dress and tugs it up over her head, keeping her back to the glass.

She knows he's watching - she _wants_ him to watch. She wants him to feel like he's beating against the rocks of the coastline, unable to find a solid anchor to hold onto, because it's the only thing she's known for months. She stands for a moment, breathing, concentrating on filling her lungs with oxygen. Then she slowly tangles her hands in her own hair and pulls it to the top of her head, exposing the lines of her neck and shoulders to the yard.

She stands like that for awhile, muscles flexing beneath the thin strap of her bra. She feels like both a stranger and a parasite in her own skin, but at least that's something she's intimately acquainted with.

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. She knows Peter is watching. He knows that her window is unlocked, that there is no barrier of ash to keep him at bay. Neither of them moves, and they are at a stalemate, and Lydia wants to flick over the white queen.

She turns, for only a moment, to look out the window so he knows it's intentional, before going to her bathroom to disrobe completely and change into her nightgown.

\--

The next morning, there is a twig of wolfsbane outside on her sill. It's a sign of something, though she doesn't know what, and she weaves her hair up into a braid to slide the stem in.

At least the blue looks good against the red splash of her hair.


End file.
